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UBRARY^OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. En-^rf 

Shelf 




UNITED STATES OF Ai/ericA 





THE CAUSES 



AMERICAN CIVIL ¥AR 



A LETTER TO THE LOXDOX TIMES. 



JOim LOTIIROP MOTLEY, LLD., D.C.L, 

AUTHOR OF "the rise of the DUTni KEPITBLIO,'" AND '' IIISTOKY OF THE UNITED 
NETHEULANDS." 



1^' 


"iC03^ 






'^V\, 


^yf^y^ 


NEW 


YORK : 




JAMES G. 


GREGORY, 



(SUCCESSOR TO ^y . a. T O W N S E N D i CO.,) 

NO. 4G WALKER STREET. 
1801. 







C. A. ALVORD, PF.INTF.K. 



THE CAUSES 



xlMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 



To THE Editor of tiik London Times : 

The de facto question in America has been referred 
at last to the dread arl)itrament of civil war. Time and 
events must determine whether tlie "great Kepublic" 
is to disappear from the roll of nations, or whether it is 
destined to survive the storm which has gathered over 
its head. There is, perhaps, a readiness in England to 
prejudge the case; a disposition not to exult in our 
downfall, hut to accept the fact ; for nations, as well as 
■ individuals, may often be addressed in the pathetic lan- 
guage of the poet — 

" Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amieos, 
Tempora cum fuerint nub 11a, nullus erit." 

Yet the trial by the ordeal of battle has hardly com- 
menced, and it would be presumptuous to aifect to pen- 
etrate the veil of even the immediate future. But the 
question de jure is a diiferent one. The right and the 
wrong belong to the past, are hidden by no veil, and 
may easily be read by all who -are not wilfully* blind. 



4: THE CAUSES OF THE 

Yet it is often asked, Why have the Americans taken 
lip arms? Why has the United States government 
plunored into what is sometimes called " this wicked 
war?"" Especially it is thought amazing in England 
that the President should have recently called for a 
graat army of volunteers and regulars, and that the in- 
habitants of the free states should have sprung forward 
as one man at his call, like men suddenly relieved from 
a spell. It would have been amazing had the call been 
longer delayed. The national flag, insulted and defied 
for many months, had at last been lowered, after the 
most astonishing kind of siege recorded in history, to 
an armed and organized, rebellion ; and a prominent 
personage in the government of the Southern " Confed- 
eracy" is reported to have proclaimed amid the exulta- 
tions of victory that before the first of May the same 
cherished emblem of our nationality should be struck 
from the Capitol at Washington. An advance of the 
" Confederate troops" upon the city ; the flight or cap- 
tivity of the President and his Cabinet ; the seizure of 
the national archives, the national title deeds, and the 
whole national machinery of foreign intercourse and 
internal administration by the Confederates; and the 
proclamation from the American palladium itself of the 
Montgomery Constitution in place of the one devised 
by Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay — a Con- 
stitution in which slavery should be the universal law 
of the land, the corner-stone of the political edifice — 
were events which seemed for a few days of intense 
anxiety almost probable. 

Had this really been the result without a blow struck 
in defence of the national government and the old con- 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. O 

stitution, it is certain that the contumely poured forth 
upon the free states by their domestic enemies and by 
the world at large would have been as richly deserved 
as it would have been amply bestowed. At present 
such a catastrophe seems to have been averted. But 
the levy in mass of such a vast number of armed men 
in the free states, in swift response to the call of the 
President, shows how deep and pervading is the attach- 
ment to the constitution and to the flag of Union in the 
hearts of the nineteen millions who inhabit those states. 
It is confidently believed, too, that the sentiment is not 
wholly extinguished in the nine million white men who 
dwell in the slave states, and.that, on the contrary, there 
exists a large party throughout that country who be- 
lieve that the Union furnishes a better protection for 
life, property, law, civilization, and liberty, than even 
the indefinite extension of African slavery can do. 

At any rate, the loyalty of the free states has proved 
more intense and })assionate than it had ever been sup- 
posed to be before. It is recognized throughout their 
whole people that the constitution of 1787 had made us a 
nation. The eftbrts of a certain class of politicians for 
• a long period had been to reduce our commonwealth to 
a confederacy. So long as their eflPorts had been con- 
fined to argument, it was considered suificient to answer 
the argument ; but now that secession, instead of remain- 
ing a topic of vehement and subtle discussion, has ex- 
panded into armed and fierce rebellion and revolution, 
civil war is the inevitable result. It is the result fore- 
told by sagacious statesmen almost a generation ago, in 
the days of the tariflf "nullification." "To begin with 
nullification," said Daniel Webster in 1833, " with the 



6 THE CAUSES OF THE 

avowed intention, nevertheless, not to proceed to seces- 
sion, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if 
one were to take the plunge of IN^lagara, and cry out 
that he would stop half-way down." And now the 
plunge of secession -has been taken, and we are all 
struggling in the vortex of general revolution. 

The body politic known for seventy years as the 
United States of America is not a csnfederacy^ not a 
compact of sovereign states, not a copartnership ; it is a 
conirnonicealth, of which the constitution drawn up at 
Philadelphia by the Convention of 1787, over which 
Washington presided, is the organic, fundamental law. 
We had already had enough of a confederacy. The thir- 
teen rebel provinces, afterwards the thirteen original 
independent states of America, had been united to each 
other during the revolutionary war by articles of con- 
federacy. '■'■The said states hereby enter into a firm 
league of friendship ivith each otherP Such was the 
language of 1781, and the league or treaty thiis drawn 
up was ratified, not by the people of the states, but by 
the state governments— the legislative and executive 
bodies, namely, in their corporate capacity. 

The Continental Congress, which was the central ad- 
ministrative board during this epoch, was a diet of 
envoys from sovereign states. It had no power to act on 
individuals. It could not command the states. It could 
move only by requisitions and recommendations. Its 
functions were essentially diplomatic, like those of the 
States-General of the old Dutch republic, like those of 
the niodern Germanic confederation. 

We were a league of petty sovereignties. AVhen the 
war had ceased, .vvhen our independence had been ac- 



AMEKICAN CIVIL WAK. 7 

kuowledi^ed in 1783, we sank raj^idly into a condition of 
utter impotence, imbecility, anarchy. We had achieved 
our independence, but we had not constructed a nation. 
We were not a body politic. No laws could be enforced, 
no insurrections suppressed, no debt collected. Neither 
property nor life was secure. Great Britain had made 
a treaty of peace with us, but she scornfully declined a 
treaty of commerce and amity; not because we had been 
rebels, but because we were not a state — because we 
were a mere dissolving league of jarring provinces, inca- 
pable of guarantying the stipulations of any commercial 
treaty. We were unable even to fulfil the condition of 
the treaty of peace and enforce the stipulated collection 
of debts due to British subjects; and Great Britain re- 
fused, in consequence, to give up the military posts 
which she held within our frontiers. 

For twelve years after the acknowledgment of our 
mdepeyuleiice we were mortified by the spectacle of for- 
eign soldiers occupying a long chain of fortresses south 
of the great lakes and upon our own soil. We were a 
confederacy. We were sovereign states. And these 
were the fruits of such a confederacy and such sov- 
ereignty. It was, until the immediate present, the 
darkest hour of our history. But tlipre were patriotic 
and sagacious men in those days, and their efforts at last 
rescued us from the condition of a confederacy. The 
" Constitution of the United States" was an organic law, 
enacted by the sovereign people of that whole territory 
which is commonly called in geographies and histories 
the United States of America. It was empowered to 
act directly, by its own legislative, judicial and execu- 
tive machinery, upon every individual in the country. 



THE CAUSES OF THE 



It could seize liis property, it could take liis life, for 
causes of which itself was the judge. The states were 
distinctly prohibited from opposing its decrees, or from 
exercising any of the great functions of sovereignty. 
The Union alone was supreme, " anything in the consti- 
tution and laws of the states to the contrary notwith- 
standing." Of what significance, then, was the title of 
" sovereign " states, arrogated in later days b}^ com- 
munities which had voluntarily abdicated the most vital 
attributes of sovereignty ? 

But, indeed, the words " sovereign " and " sdv- 
ereignty " are purely inapplicable to the American sys- 
tem. In the Declaration of independence the provinces 
declare themselves " free and independent states," but 
the men of those days knew that the word " sovereign " 
was a term of feudal origin. When their connection 
wnth a time-honored feudal monarchy was abruptly sev- 
ered the word " sovereign " had no meaning for us. A 
sovereign is one who acknowledges no superior, who pos- 
sesses the highest authority without control, who is su- 
preme in power. How could any one state of the 
United States claim such characteristics at all, least of 
all after its inhabitants, in their primary assemblies, had 
voted to submit themselves, without limitation of time, 
to a constitution which was declared supreme? The 
only intelligible source of power in a country beginning 
its history da novo after a revolution, in a land never 
subjected to military or feudal conquest, is the will of 
the people of the whole land as expressed by a majority. 
At the present moment, unless the soflthern revolution 
shall prove successful, the United States government is 
a fact, ail cstablislied authority. In the period between 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 9 

1783 and 1787 we were in chaos. In May of 1787' the 
convention met at Philadelphia, and, after some months' 
deliberation, adopted with unprecedented unanimity the 
project of the great law, which, so soon as it should be 
accepted by the people, was to be known as the Consti- 
tution of the United States. 

It was not a compact. TTAo ever heard of a compact 
to which there were no parties^ or who ever heard of a 
compact made hy a single party with himself? Yet 
the name of no state is mentioned in the whole docu- 
ment ; the states themselves are only mentioned to re- 
ceive commands or prohibitions, and the " people of the 
United States" is the siiigle party by whom alone the 
instrument is executed. 

The constitution was not drawn up by the states, it 
was not promulgated in the name of the states, it was 
not ratified by the states. The states never acceded to 
it, and possess no power to secede from it. It " was or- 
dained and established" over the states by a power su- 
perior to the states — by the people of the whole land in 
their aggregate capacity, acting through conventions of 
delegates expressly chosen for the purpose within each 
state, independently of the state governments, after the 
project had been framed. 

There had always been two parties in the country 
during the brief but pregnant period between the abju- 
ration of British authority and the adoption of the Con- 
stitution of 1787. There was a party advocating state 
rights and local self-government in its largest sense, and 
a party favoring a more consolidated and national gov- 
ernment. The National or Federal party triumphed in 
the adoption of the new government. It was strenu- 



10 THE CAUSES OF THE 

ously supported and bitterly opposed on exactly the 
same grounds. Its friends and foes both agreed that it 
had put an end to the system of confederacy. Whether 
it were an advantageous or a noxious change, all agreed 
that the thing had been done. 

" In all our deliberations (says the letter accompany- 
ing and recommending the constitution to the people) 
we kept steadily in view that which appeared to us the 
greatest interest of every true American, the consolida- 
tion of our TJnion^ in which is involved our prosperity, 
safety, perhaps our national existence.'''' {Journal of the 
Convention, 1 Story, 368.) 

And an eloquent opponent denounced the proj^ect for 
this very same reason : 

" That this is a consolidated government (said Henry) 
is demonstrably clear. The language is, ' we the peo- 
ple,' instead of ' we the states.' It must be one great 
consolidated national government of the j3eople of all the 
states." 

And the Supreme Court of the United States, after 
the government had been established, held this language 
in an important case, " Gibbons agt. Ogden :" 

" It has been said that the states were sovereign, were 
completely independent, and were connected with each 
other by a league. This is true. But when these allied 
sovereignties converted their league into a government, 
when they converted their Congress of ambassadors into 
a legislature, empowered to enact laws, the whole charac- 
ter in which the states appear underwent a change." 

There was never a disposition in any quarter in the 
early day-s of our constitutional history to deny this 
great fundamental principle of the Republic. 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 11 

"Ih the most elaborate expositions of the constitu- 
tion by its friends (says Justice Story), its character as a 
permanent form of government, as a fundamental law, 
as a supreme rule, which no state was at liberty to dis- 
regard, to suspend, or to annul, was constantly admitted 
and insisted upon.'^ (1 Story, 325.) 

The fears of its opponents, then, were that the new 
system would lead to a strong, to an over-centralized 
government. The fears of its friends were that the cen- 
tral power of theory would pirove inefficient to cope 
with the local, or state forces, in practice. The inexpe- 
rience of the last thirty years and the catastrophe of the 
present year, have shown which class of fears were the 
more reasonable. 

Had the Union thus establislied in 1787 been a con- 
federacy, it might have been argued, with more or less 
plausibility, that the states which peaceably acceded to 
it, might at pleasure peaceably secede from it. It is 
none the less true that such a proceeding would have 
stamped the members of the convention — Washington, 
Madison, Jay, Hamilton and their colleagues — with 
utter incompetence ; for nothing can be historically 
more certain than that their object was to extricate us 
from the anarchy to which that principle had brought 
.us. 

^'■However gross a heresy it may he (say the federal- 
ists, recommending the new constitution), to maintain 
that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that 
compact, the doctrine has had respectable advocates. 
The possihility of such a question shows the necessity 
of laying the foundation of our national government 
deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated author- 



12 THE CAUSES OF THE 

ity. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on 
the solid basis of the consent of the people." 

Certainly, the most venerated expounders of the con- 
stitution — Jay, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, Story, "Web- 
ster — were of opinion that the intention of the conven- 
tion to establish a permanent consolidated government, 
a single commonwealth, had been completely successful. 

" The great and fundamental defect of the confedera- 
tion of 1781 (says Chancellor Kent), which led to its 
eventual overthrow, was that, in imitation of all former 
confederacies, it carried the decrees of the federal council 
to the states in their sovereign capacity. The great and 
incurable defect of all former federal governments, such 
as the Amphictyonic, Achjean, and Lycian Confederacies, 
and the Germanic, Helvetic, Hanseatic and Dutch Re- 
publics, is that they Avere sovereignties over sovereignties. 
The first eifort to relieve the people of the country from 
this state of national degradation and ruin came from 
Virginia. The general convention afterwards met at 
Philadelphia in May, 1787. The plan was submitted to 
a convention of delegates chosen by the people at large 
in each state for assent and ratification. Such a mea- 
sure was laying the foundations of the fabric of our 
national polity where alone they ought to be laid — on the 
broad consent of the people." (1 Kent, 225.) 

It is true that the consent of the people was given by 
the inhabitants voting in each state ; but in what other 
conceivable way could the people of the whole country 
have voted ? "They assembled in the several states," 
said Story ; " but where else could they assemble?" 

/Secession is, in brief , the return to chaos from which 
we einerged three-quarters of a century since. No logi- 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAK. 13 

cal sequence can be more perfect. If one state lias a 
right to secede to-daj, asserting what it calls its sover- 
eignty, another may, and probably will, do the same 
to-morrow, a third on the next day, and so on, until there 
are none to secede from. Granted the premises that 
each state may peaceabl}' secede from the Union, it fol- 
lows that a county may peaceably secede from a state, 
and a town from a county, until there is nothing left 
but a horde of individuals all seceding from each other. 
The theoi-y that the people of a whole country in their 
aggregate capacity are supreme is intelligible ; and it 
has been a fact, also, in America for seventy years. 
But it is impossible to show, if the people of a state be 
sovereign, that the people of a county or of a village, 
and the individuals of the village, are uot equally sov- 
ereign, and justified in "resuming their sovereignty" 
when their interest or their caprice seems to impel them. 
The process of disintegration brings back the commu- 
nity to barbarism, precisely as its converse has built up 
commonwealths — whether empires, kingdoms, or repub- 
lics — out of original barbarism. 

Established authority, whatever the theory of its ori- 
gin, is a fact. It should never be lightly or capriciously 
overturned. They who venture on the attempt should 
weigh well the responsibility which is upon them. 
Above all, they must expect to be arraigned for their 
deeds before the tribunal of the civilized world and of 
future ages — a court of last appeal, the code of which 
is based on the Divine principles of right and reason, 
w^hich are dispassionate and eternal. No man, on either 
side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his 
veins, will dispute the right of a people, or of any por- 



14 THE CAUSES OF THE 

tion of a people, to rise against oppression, to demand 
redress of grievances, and in case of denial of justice to 
take Tip arms to vindicate the sacred principles of lib- 
erty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that 
the sonrce of government is the consent of the governed, 
or that any nation has the right to govern itself accord- 
inoj to its own will. When the silent consent is champed 
to fierce i*emonstrance the revolution is impending. 

The right of revolution is iudispntable. It is written 
on the whole record of our race. British and American 
history is made up of rebellion and revolution. Many 
of the crowned kings were rebels or nsurpers. Hamp- 
den, Pym and Oliver Cromwell; Washington, Adams 
and Jefferson — all were rebels. It is no word of re- 
proach. But these men all knew the work they had set 
themselves to do. They never called their rebellion 
"peaceable secession." They were sustained by the 
consciousness of right when they overthrew established 
authority, but they meant to overthrow it. They meant 
rebellion, civil war, bloodshed, infinite suffering for 
themselves and their whole generation, tor they ac- 
counted them welcome substitutes for insulted liberty 
and violated right. There can be nothing plainer, then, 
than the American right of revolution. But, tlien, it 
shonld be called revolution. "Secession, as a revolu- 
tionary right," said Daniel Webster in the Senate, nearly 
thirty years ago, in words that now sound prophetic — 
"is intelligible. As a right to be proclaimed in the 
midst of civil commotions^ and asserted at the head of 
armies^ I can understand it. But as a practical right, 
existing under the constitution, and in conformity with 
its provisions, it seems to be nothing but an absurdity. 



AiyiERICAN CITIL WAR. 15 

for it supposes resistance to government under the au- 
thority of government itself; it supposes dismember- 
ment without violating the principles of Union ; it sup- 
poses the violation of oaths without responsibility ; it 
supposes opposition to law without crime ; it supposes 
the total overthrow of government without revolution.*' 

The men who had conducted the American people 
through a long and fearful revolution were the founders 
of the new commonwealth which permanently super- 
seded the subverted authority of the crown. They 
placed the foundations on the unbiassed, untrammelled 
consent of the people. They were sick of leagues, of 
petty sovereignties, of governments which could not 
crovern a single individual. The framers of the consti- 
tution, which has now endured three-quarters of a cen- 
tury, and under which the nation has made a material 
and intellectual progress never surpassed in history, 
were not such triflers as to be ignorant of the conse- 
quences of their own acts. The constitution which they 
offered, and which the people adopted as its own, talked 
not of sovereign states — spoke not the word confederacy. 
In the very preamble to the instrument are inserted the 
vital words which show its character, " We, the people 
of the United States, to insure a more perfect union, 
and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and. 
our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution^ 
Sic volo, sic juheo. It is the language of a sovereign 
solemnly speaking to the world. It is the promulgation 
of a great law, the norma agendi of a new common- 
wealth. It is no compact. 

" A compact (says Blackstone) is a promise proceed- 
ing from us. Law is a command directed to us. The 



16 THE CAUSES OF THE 

language of a compact is, We will or will not do this ; 
that of a law is, Thou shalt or shalt not do it." (1 B. 
38, 44, 45.) 

And this is throughout the language of the constitu- 
tion. Congress shall do this ; the President shall do 
that ; the states shall not exercise this or that power. 
Witness, for example, the important clauses by which 
the " sovereign" states are shorn of all the great attri- 
butes of sovereignty — no state shall coin money, nor 
emit bills of credit, nor pass ex j^ost facto laws, nor laws 
impairing the obligation of contracts, nor maintain 
armies and navies, nor grant letters of marque, nor 
make compacts with other states, nor hold intercourse 
with foreign powers, nor grant titles of nobility ; and 
that most significant phrase, " this constitution, and the 
laws made in pursuance thereof, shall he the sujpreme 
law of the land^ 

Could language be more imperial ? Could the claim 
to state "sovereignty" be more completely disposed of 
at a word ? How can that be sovereign, acknowledging 
no superior, supreme, which has voluntarily accepted a 
supreme law from something which it acknowledges as 
superior ? 

The constitution is perpetual, not provisional or tem- 
porary. It is made for all time — " for ourselves and our 
posterity." It is absolute within its sphere. " Tliis con- 
stitution shall be the supreme law of the land, anything 
in the constitution or laws of a state to the contrary not- 
withstanding." Of what value, then, is a law of a state 
declarino; its connection with the Union dissolved ? The 
constitution remains supreme, and is bound to assert its 
supremacy till overpowered by force. The use of force 



AMERICAN CR'IL WAR. 17 

— of armies and navies of whatever strength — in order 
to compel obedience to the civil and constitutional au- 
thority, is not ^'■wicked war^'' is not civil war, is not war 
at all. So long as it exists tlie government is obliged to 
put forth its strength when assailed. The President, who 
has taken an oath before God and man to maintain the 
constitution and laws, is perjured if he yields the con- 
stitution and laws to armed rebellion without a strug- 
gle. He knows nothing of states. Within the sphere of 
the United States government he deals with individuals 
only, citizens of the great republic, in whatever portion 
of it they may happen to live. He has no choice but to 
enforce the laws of the republic wherever they niay be 
resisted. When he is overpowered, the government 
ceases to exist. The Union is gone, and Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island, and Ohio are as much separated from 
each other as they are from Georgia or Louisiana. An- 
archy has returned upon us. The dismemberment of 
the commonwealth is complete. We are again in the 
chaos of 1785. 

But it is sometimes asked why the constitution did 
not make a special provision against the right of seces- 
sion. How could it do so ? The people created a con- 
stitution over the whole land, with certain defined, accu- 
rately enumerated powers, and among these were all the 
chief attributes of sovereignty. It was forbidden to a 
state to coin money, to keep armies and navies, to make 
compacts with other states, to hold intercourse with for- 
eign nations, to oppose the authority of the government. 
To do any one of these things is to secede, for it would be 
physically impossible to do any one of them without se- 
cession. It would have been puerile for the constitution 
2 



18 THE CAUSES OF THE 

to say formally to each state, " Thou shalt not secede." 
The constitution, being the supreme law, being perpet- 
ual, and having expressly forbidden to the states those 
acts without which secession is an impossibility, would 
have heen wanting in dignity had it used such super- 
jluoxis phraseology. This constitution is supreme, what- 
ever laws a state may enact, says the organic law. Was 
it necessary to add, " and no state shall enact a law of 
secession." To add to a great statute, in which the sov- 
ereign authority of the land declares its will, a phrase 
such as " and be it further enacted that the said law 
shall not be violated," would scarcely seem to strengthen 
the statute. 

It was accordingly enacted that new states might be 
admitted ; but no permission was given for a state to 
secede. 

Provisions were made for the amendment of the con- 
stitution from time to time, and it M'as intended that 
those provisions should be stringent. A two-thirds vote 
in both Houses of Congress, and a ratification in three 
quarters of the whole number of states, are conditions 
only to be complied with in grave emergencies. But 
the constttution made no provision for its own dissolu- 
tion ; and if it had done so, it would have been a pro- 
ceeding quite without example in history. A constitu- 
tion can only be subverted by revolution, or by foreign 
conquest of the land. The revolution may be the re- 
sult of a successful rebellion. A peaceful revolution 
is also conceivable in the case of the United States. 
The same power which established the constitution may 
justly destroy it. The people of the whole land may 
meet, by delegates, in a great national convention, as 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 19 

they did in 1787, and declare that the constitution no 
longer answers the purpose tor which it was ordained ; 
that it no longer can secure the blessings of liberty 
for the people in present and future generations, and 
that it is therefore forever abolished. When that pro- 
ject has been submitted again to the people voting in 
their primary assemblies, not influenced by fraud or 
force, the revolution is lawfully accomplished, and the 
Union is no more. 

Such a proceeding is conceivable, although attended 
with innumerable difficulties and dangers. But these 
are not so great as those of the civil war into which the 
action of the seceding states has plunged the country. 
The division of the national domain and other property, 
the navigation and police of the gi'eat rivers, the ar- 
rangement and fortification of fi'ontiers, the transit of 
the isthmus, the mouth of the Mississippi, the control 
of the Gulf of Mexico, these are significant phrases 
which have an appalling sound ; for there is not one of 
them that does not contain the seeds of war. In any 
separation, however accomplished, these difficulties must 
be dealt with, but there would seem less hope of arriv- 
ing at a peaceful settlement of them now that the action 
of the seceding states has been so precipitate and law- 
less. For a single state, one after another, to resume 
those functions of sovereignty which it had uncondition- 
ally abdicated when its people ratified the constitution 
of 17S7 ; to seize forts, arsenals, custom-houses, post- 
offices, mints, and other valuable property of the Union, 
paid for by the treasure of the Union, was not the ex- 
ercise of a legal function, but it was rebellion, treason, 
and plunder. 



20 THE CAUSES OF THE 

It is strange that Englishmen should find difficulty in 
understanding that the United States government is a 
nation among the nations of the earth ; a constituted 
authority, which may be overthrown by violence, as 
may be the fate of any state, whether kingdom or re- 
public, but which is false to the people if it does not its 
best to preserve them from the horrors of anarchy, even 
at the cost of blood. The " United States" happens to 
be a plural title, but the commonwealth thus designated 
is a unit, " e plurihus ununi.^^ The Union alone is 
clothed with iinperial attributes ; the Union alone is 
hnown and recognized in the family of nations / the 
Union alone holds the j>urse and the sioord, regulates 
foreign intercourse, imposes taxes on foreign commerce, 
makes war and concludes peace. The armies, the na- 
vies, the militia, belong to the Union alone ; and the 
president is commander-in-chief of all. Ko state can 
keep troops or fleets. What man in the civilized world 
has not heard of the United States ; what man in Eng- 
land can tell the names of all the individual states? 
And yet, with hardly a superficial examination of our 
history and our constitution, men talk glibly about a con- 
federacy, a compact, a copartnership, and the right of a 
state to secede at pleasure, not knowing that by admit- 
ting such loose phraseology and such imaginary rights, 
we should violate the first principles of our political or- 
ganization, should fly in the face of our history, should 
trample under foot the teachings of Jay, Hamilton, 
"Washington, Marshall, Madison, Dane, Kent, Story, 
and Webster, and accepting only the dogmas of Mr. 
Calhoun as infallible, surrender forever our national 
laws and our national existence. 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAE. 21 

Englishmen themselves live in a united empire ; but 
if the kingdom of Scotland should secede, should seize 
all the national property, forts, arsenals, and public 
treasure on its soil, organize an army, send forth foreign 
ministers to Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of Austria, 
and other powers, issue invitations to all the pirates of 
the world to prey upon English commerce, screening 
their piracy from punishment by the banner of Scot- 
land, and should announce its intention of planting that 
flag upon Buckingham Palace, it is probable that a 
blow or two would be struck to defend the national 
honor and the national existence, without fear that the 
civil war would be denounced as wicked and fratricidal. 
Yet it would be difficult to show that the state of Flori- 
da, for example, a Spanish province, purchased for na- 
tional purposes some forty years ago by the United 
States government for several millions, and fortified 
and furnished with navy yards for national uses at a 
national expense of many more millions, and number- 
ing at this moment a population of only eighty thou- 
sand white men, should be more entitled to resume its 
original sovereignty than the ancient kingdom of Wil- 
liam the Lion and Robert Bruce. 

The terms of the treaty between England and Scot- 
land were perpetual, and so is the Constitution of the 
United States. The United Empire may be destroyed 
by revolution and war, and so may the United States ; 
but a peaceful and legal dismemberment without the 
consent of the majority of the whole people is an im- 
possibility. 

But it is sometimes said that the American Republic 
originated in secession from the mother country, and 



22 . THE CArSES OF THE 

that it is unreasonable of the Union to resist the seced- 
ing movement on the part of the new Confederacy. 
But it so linppcns tliat the one case suggests the other 
only by the association of contrast. The thirteen colo- 
nies did not intend to secede from the British empire. 
They were forced into secession by a course of policy 
on the part of the mother country such as no English 
administration of the present day can be imagined 
capable of adopting. Those Englishmen in America 
were loyal to the Crown ; but they exercised the right 
which cisatlantic or transatlantic Englishmen have al- 
ways exercised, of resistance to arbitrary government. 
Taxed without being represented, and insulted by meas- 
ures taken to enforce the odious but not exorbitant im- 
posts, they did not secede, nor declare their indej^end- 
ence. On the contrary, they made every eifort to avert 
such a conclusion. In the words of the "forest-born 
Demosthenes" — as Lord Byron called the great Yir- 
ginian, Patrick Henry — the Americans "petitioned, re- 
monstrated, cast themselres at the foot of the throne, 
and imj)lored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical 
hands of the ministers and Parliament. But their peti- 
tion were slighted, their remonstrances procured only 
additional violence and insult, as they Vv'ere spurned 
with contempt from the foot of the throne." 

The " Boston massacre," the Boston port-bill, the 
Boston " tea-party," the battle of Lexington, the battle 
of Bunker's Hill, were events which long preceded the 
famous Declaration of Lidependence. It was not until 
the colonists felt that redress for grievances was impos- 
sible that they took the irrevocable step, and renounced 
their allegiance to the Crown. The revolution had 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 23 

come at last, tliej had been forced into it, but tliey 
knew that it was revohition, and that they were acting 
at the peril of their lives. " We must be imaniraons in 
this business," said Hancock ; " we must all hang to- 
gether." " Yes," replied Franklin, " or else we shall all 
hang separately." 

The risk incurred by the colonists was enormous, but 
the injury to the mother country was comparatively 
slight. They went out into darkness and danger them- 
selves, but the British empire was not thrown into anar- 
chy and chaos by their secession. 

Thus their course was the reverse of that adopted by 
the South. The prompt secession of seven states be- 
cause of the constitutional election of a President over 
the candidates voted for by their people was the redress 
in advance of grievances which they may, reasonably 
or unreasonably, have expected, but which had not yet 
occurred. There is]the high authority of the Yice-Pres- 
ident of the southern "Confederacy," who declared a 
"week after the election of Mr. Lincoln that the electron 
was not a cause for secession, and that there was no 
certainty that he would have either the power or the 
inclination to invade the constitutional rights of the 
South. In the free states it was held that the resolu- 
tions of the convention by which Mr. Lincoln was nom- 
inated were scrupulously and conscientiously framed to 
protect all those constitutional rights. The question of 
slavery in the territories, of the future extension of 
slavery, was one which had always been an open ques- 
tion, and on which issue was now joined. But it was 
no question at all that slavery within a state was sacred 
from all interference by the general government, or by 



24 THE CAUSES OF THE 

the free states, or by individuals in those states ; and 
the Chicago Convention strenuously asserted that doc- 
trine. 

The question of free trade, which is thrust before the 
English public by many journals, had no immediate 
connection with the secession, although doubtless the 
desire of direct trade with Europe has long been a 
prominent motive at the South. The Gulf states se- 
ceded under the moderate tariff of 1857, for which South 
Carolina voted side by side with Massachusetts. The 
latter state, although for political, not economical rea- 
sons it thought itself obliged since the secession to sus- 
tain the Pennsylvania interest by voting for the absurd 
Morrill bill, is not in favor of protection. On the con- 
trary, the great manufactories on the Merrimac river 
have long been independent of protection, and export 
many million dollars' wortli of cotton and other fabrics 
to foreign countries, underselling or competing with all 
the world in open market. It would be impossible for 
any European nation to drive the American manufac- 
turer from the markets of the American continent in 
the principal articles of cheap clothing for the masses, 
tariff or no tariff. This is a statistical fact which can- 
not be impugned. 

The secession of the colonies, after years of oppression 
and grievances for which redress had been sought in 
vain, left the British empire, 3,000 miles off, in security, 
with constitution and laws unimpaired, even if its colo- 
nial territory were seriously diminished. The secession 
of the southern states, in contempt of any other remedy 
for expected grievances, is followed by the destruction 
of the whole body politic of which they were vital parts. 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 25 

Not only is the united republic destroyed if the revo- 
lution prove successful, but, even if the people of the 
free states have the enthusiasm and sagacity to recon- 
struct their Union, and by a new national convention 
to re-ordain and re-establish the time-honored constitu- 
tion, still an immense territory is lost. But the extent 
of that territory is not the principal element in the dis- 
aster. The world is wide enough for all. It is the loss 
of the southern marine frontier which is fatal to the lie- 
public. Florida and the vast Louisiana territory pur- 
chased by the Union from foreign countries, and gar- 
nished with fortresses at the expense of the Union, are 
fallen with all these improvements into the hands of a 
foreign and unfriendly power. 

Should the dire misfortune of a war with a great 
maritime nation, with England or France, for example, 
befall the Union, its territory, hitherto almost impregna- 
ble, might now be open to fleets and armies acting in 
alliance with a hostile " Confederacy," which has be- 
come possessed of an important part of the Union's 
maritime line of defence. Moreover the Union has 
twelve thousand ships, numbering more than five mil- 
lion tons, the far greater part of which belongs to the 
free states, and the vast commerce of the Mississippi 
and the Gulf of Mexico requires and must receive pro- 
tection at every hazard. 

Is it strange that the Union should make a vigorous, 
just, and lawful effort to save itself from the chaos from 
which the constitution of 1787 rescued the country ? 
"Who that has read and pondered the history of tliat 
dark period does not shudder at the prospect of its re- 
turn ? 



26 THE CAUSES OF THE 

But yesterday we were a state — the great republic — 
prosperous and powerful, with a flag known and hon- 
ored all over the world. Seventy years ago we were a 
helpless league of bankrupt and lawless petty sover- 
eignties. We had a currency so degraded that a leg of 
mutton was cheap at one thousand dollars. The na- 
tional debt, incurred in the war of indejiendence, had 
hardly a nominal value, and was considered worthless. 
The absence of law, order, and security for life and 
property was as absolute as could be well conceived in 
a civilized land. Debts could not be collected, courts 
could enforce no decrees, insurrections could not be 
suppressed. The army of the confederacy numbered 
eighty men. From this condition the constitution res- 
cued us. 

That great law, reported by the General Convention 
of 1787, was ratified by the people of all the land vot- 
ing in each state for a ratifying convention chosen ex- 
pressly for that purpose. It was promulgated in the 
name of the people : " We, the people of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect Union, and to 
secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish this constitution." It 
was ratified by the people — not hy the states acting 
through their governments, legislative and executive, 
but by the people electing special delegates within each 
state ; and it is important to remember that in none of 
these ratifying conventions was any reserve made of a 
state's right to repeal the Union or to secede. 

Many criticisms were ofi'ered in the various ratifying 
ordinances, many amendments suggested, but the ac- 
ceptance of the constitution, the submission to the per- 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 27 

petnal law, was in all cases absolute. The language of 
Virginia was most explicit on this point. "The powers 
granted under the constitution, being derived from the 
jpeojjile of the United States, may be resumed by them, 
whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or 
oppression." That the people of the United States, ex- 
pressing their will solemnly in national convention, are 
competent to undo the work of their ancestors, and are 
fully justified in so doing when the constitution shall 
be perverted to their injury and oppression, there is no 
man in the land that doubts. This course has been al- 
ready indicated as the only peaceful revolution possi- 
ble ; but such a proceeding is very different from the 
secession ordinance of a single state resuming its sov- 
ereignty of its own free will, and without consultation 
with the rest of the inhabitants of the country. 

"There was no reservation (says Justice Story) of any 
right on the part of any state to dissolve its connection, 
or to abrogate its dissent, or to suspend the operation of 
the constitution as to itself." 

And thus, when the ratifications had been made, a 
new commonwealth took its place among the nations of 
the earth. The effects of the new constitution were al- 
most magical. Order sprang out of chaos. Law re- 
sumed its reign; debts were collected ; life and property 
became secure ; the national debt was funded and ulti- 
mately paid, principal and interest, to the uttermost 
farthing ; the articles of the treaty of peace in 1783 
were fulfilled, and Great Britain, having an organized 
and united state to deal with, entered into a treaty of 
commerce and amity with us — the first and the best 
ever negotiated between the two nations. !Not the 



28 THE CAUSES OF THE 

least noble of its articles (the 21st) provided that the 
acceptance by the citizens or subjects of either country 
of foreign letters of marque should be treated and 
punished as inracy. Unfortunately, that article and 
several others were limited to twelve years, and were 
not subsequently renewed. The debts due to British 
subjects were collected, and the British government at 
last surrendered the forts on our soil. 

At last we were a nation, with a flag respected abroad 
and almost idolized at home as the symbol of union and 
coming greatness, and we entered upon a career of pros- 
perity and progress never surpassed in history. The 
autonomy of each state, according to which its domestic 
and interior affairs are subject to the domestic legisla- 
ture and executive, was secured by the reservation to 
each state of powers not expressly granted to the Union 
by the constitution. Supreme within its own orbit, 
which is traced from tlie same centre of popular power 
whence tlie wnder circumference of the general govern- 
ment is described, the individual state is surrounded on 
all sides by that all-embracing circle. The reserved and 
unnamed powers are many and important, but the state 
is closely circumscribed. Thus, a state is forbidden to 
alter its form of government. " Thou shalt forever re- 
main a republic," says the United States constitution to 
each individual state. A state is forbidden, above all, to 
pass any law conflicting with the United States consti- 
tution or laws. Moreover, every member of Congress, 
every member of a state legislature, every executive or 
judicial officer in the service of the Union or of a sepa- 
rate state, is bound by solemn oath to maintain the 
United States constitution. This alone would seem 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 2^ 

to settle the question of secession ordinances. So long 
as the constitution endures, such an ordinance is merely 
the act of conspiring and combining individuals, with 
whom the general government may deal. When it falls 
in the struggle, and becomes powerless to cope with 
them, the constitution has been destroyed by violence. 
Peaceful acquiescence in such combinations is perjury 
and treason on the jpart of the chief magistrate of the 
country^ for which he may he impeached and executed. 
Yet men speak of Mr. Lincoln as having plunged into 
wicked loar. They censure him for not negotiating with 
envoys who came, not to settle grievances, but to de- 
mand recognition of the dismemberment of the republic 
which he had just sworn to maintain. 

It is true that the ordinary daily and petty affairs of 
men come more immediately than larger matters under 
the cognizance of the state governments, tending thus 
to foster local patriotism and local allegiance. At the 
same time, as all controversies between citizens of differ- 
ent states come within the sphere of the federal courts, 
and as the manifold and conflicting currents of so rapid 
a national life as the American can rarely be confined 
within narrow geographical boundaries, it follows that 
the federal courts, even for domestic purposes as well as 
foreign, are parts of the daily, visible functions of the 
body politic. The Union is omnipresent. The custom- 
house, the court-house, the arsenal, the village post-office, 
the muskets of the ^militia, make the authority of the 
general government a constant fact. Moreover, the rest- 
less, migratory character of the population, which rarely 
permits all the members of one family to remain deni- 
zens of any one state, has interlaced the states with each 



30 THE CAUSES OF THE 

other, and all with the Union to such an extent that a 
painless excision of a portion of the whole nation is an 
impossibility. To cut away the pound of flesh and draw 
no drop of blood surpasses human ingenuity. 

[Neither the opponents nor friends of the new govern- 
ment in the first generation after its establishment held 
the doctrine of secession. The states' right party and 
the federal party disliked or cherished the government 
because of the general conviction that it was a consti- 
tuted and centralized authority, permanent and indivis- 
ible, like that of any other organized nation. Each 
party continued to favor or to oppose a strict construc- 
tion of the instrument ; but the doctrine of nullification 
and secession was a plant of later growth. It was an 
accepted tact that the United States was not a confeder- 
acy. That word was never nsed in the constitution ex- 
cept once by way of prohibition. We were a nation, 
not a copartnership, except indeed in the larger sense 
in which every nation may be considered a copartner- 
ship — a copartnership of the present with the past and 
with the future. To borrow the lofty language of Burke : 

"A state ought not to be considered as nothing better 
than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and 
coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low con- 
cern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and 
to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be 
looked upon with other reverence, because it is 4iot a 
partnership in things subservient only to gross animal 
existence, of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a 
jDartnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a 
partnership in everj^ virtue and in all perfection, a part- 
nership not only between those who are living, but be- 



AMEKICAN CIVIL WAR. 31 

tween those who are living, those who are dead, and 
those who are to be born." 

And the simple phrase of the preamble to our consti- 
tution is almost as pregnant — " To secure the blessings 
of liberty to us and our posterity." 

But as the innumerable woes of disunion out of wliich 
we hud been rescued by the constitution began to fade 
into tlie past, the allegiance to the Union, in certain re- 
gions of the country, seemed rajsidly to diminish. It 
was reserved to the subtle genius of Mr. CalJtoun, one of 
the most logical, brilliant and persuasive orators that 
ever lived, to embody once more in a set of sounding 
sophisms the main arguments which had been unsuc- 
cessfully used in a former generation to prevent the 
adoption of the constitution, and to exhibit them now as 
legitimate deductions from the constitution. The mem- 
orable tariff controversy was the occasion in which the 
argument of state sovereignty was put forth in all its 
strength. In regard to the dispute itself there can be no 
doubt that the South was in the right, and the North in 
the wrong. The production by an exaggerated tarifi' of 
a revenue so much over and above the wants of govern- 
ment, that it was at last divided among the separate 
states, and foolishly squandered, was the most triumph- 
ant reductio ad ahsurdum, that the South could have de- 
sired. But it is none the less true that the nullification 
by a state legislature of a federal law was a greater in- 
jury to the whole nation than a foolish taritf, long since 
repealed, had inflicted. It was a stab to the Union in 
its vital part. Tlie blow was partially parried, but it 
may be doubted whether the wound has ever healed. 

Tariffs, tlie protective system, free trade — although 



32 THE CAUSES OF THE 

the merits of tliese questions must be considered as set- 
tled by sound thinkers in all civilized lands, must, nev- 
ertheless, remain in some countries the subjects of honest 
argument and legitimate controversy. When all parts 
of a country are represented — and especially in the case 
of the United States, where the southern portion has 
three-fifths of a certain kind of " property" represented, 
while the North has no property represented — reason 
should contend with error for victory, trusting to its in- 
nate strength. And until after the secession of the Gulf 
states the moderate tariff of 1857 was in operation, with 
no probability of its repeal. Moreover, the advocates of 
the enlightened system of free trade should reflect that 
should the fourteen slave states become permanently 
united in a separate confederacy, the state of their in- 
ternal affairs will soon show a remarkable revolution. 
The absence of the Fugitive law will necessarily drive 
all the slaves from what are called the horder states ; and 
he must be a shallow politician who dreams here in 
England that free trade with all the world, and direct 
taxation for revenue, will be the policy of the new and 
expensive military empire which will arise. Manufac- 
tures of cotton and woollen will spring up on every river 
and mountain stream in the northern slave states, the 
vast mineral wealth of their territories will require de- 
velopment, and the cry for protection to native industry 
in one quarter will be as surely heeded as will be that 
other cry from the Gulf of Mexico, now partially sup- 
pressed for obvious reasons, for the African slave trade. 
To establish a great Gulf empire, including Mexico, Cen- 
tral America, Cuba, and other islands, with unlimited 
cotton fields and unlimited negroes, this is the golden 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 33 

vision, ill pursuit of which the great republic has been 
sacrificed, the beneficent constitution subverted. And 
already the vision has fled, but the work of destruction 
remains. 

Tlie mischief caused by a tariff, however selfish or 
however absurd, may be temporary. In the last nine- 
teen years there have been four separate tariffs i>assed 
by the American Congress, and nothing is more proba- 
ble than that the suicidal Mon-ill tariff will receive essen- 
tial modifications even in the special session of July ; but 
the woes caused by secession and civil war are infinite ; 
and whatever be the result of the contest, this genera- 
tion is not likely to forget the injuries already inflicted. 

The great secession, therefore, of 1860-Gl is a rebel- 
lion, like any other insurrection against established au- 
thority, and has been followed by civil war as its imme- 
diate and inevitable consequence. If successful, it is a 
revolution ; and whether successful or not, it will be 
judged before the tribunal of mankind and posterity 
according to the eternal laws of reason and justice. 

Time and history will decide whether it was a good 
and sagacious deed to destroy a fabric of so long dura- 
tion because of the election of Mr. Lincoln ; loJidhcr it 
were wise and nohle to suhstitute over a large j^ortion of 
the American soil a confederacy of which slavery^ in the 
words of its Vice-President, is the corner-stone, for the 
old rejpuhlic, of which Washington with his own hand 
laid the corner-stone. 

It is conceded by the North that it has received from 
the Union innumerable blessings. But it would seem 
that the Union had also conferred beneflts on the South. 
It has carried its mails at a large expense. It has re- 



34 THE CAUSES OF THE 

captured its fugitive slaves. It lias purchased vast 
tracts of foreign territory, out of which a whole tier of 
slave states has been constructed. It has annexed Texas. 
It has made war with Mexico. It has made an offer — 
not likely to be repeated, however — to purchase Cuba, 
with its multitude of slaves, at a price, according to re- 
port, as large as the sum paid by England for the eman- 
cipation of her slaves. Individuals in the free states 
have expressed themselves freely on slavery, as u[)on 
every topic of human thought, and this must ever be 
the case wliere there is freedom of the ])ress and of 
speech. The number of professed abolitionists has hith- 
erto been \evy small, while the great body of the two 
principal political parties in the free states have been 
strongly opposed to them. The Republican party was 
determined to set bounds to the extension of slavery, 
while the Democratic party favored that system ; but 
neither had designs secret or avowed against slavery 
within the states. They knew that the question could 
only be legally and rationally dealt with by the states 
themselves. But both the parties, as present events are 
so signally demonstrating, were imbued wirh a passion- 
ate attachment to the constitution, to the established au- 
thority of government, by which alone our laws and 
our liberty are secured. All parties in the free states 
are now united as one man, inspired by a noble and 
generous emotion to vindicate the sullied honoi- of their 
flag, and to save their country from the al)yss of perdi- 
tion into which it seemed descending. 

Of the ultimate result we have no intention of speak- 
ing. Only the presumptuous will venture to lift the 
veil and affect to read with accuracy coming events, 



AMEEICAN CIVIL WAK, 35 

the most momentous perhaps of our times. One result 
is, however, secured. The Montgomery constitution, 
witli shivery for its corner-stone, is not likely to he ac- 
cepted, as but lately seemed possible, not only by all 
the slave states, but even by the border free states ; nor 
to be proclaimed from Washington as the new national 
law in the name of the United States. Com pr onuses 
will no longer he offered ly peace conventions^ in tchich 
slavery is to he made national^ negroes declared ])rop- 
erty over all the land, and slavery extended over all 
territories now possessed or hereafter to be acquired. 
Nor is the United States government yet driven from 
Wasiiington. 

Events are ra])idly um-olling themselves, and it will 
be proved, in course of time, whether the Xorth will 
remain nnited in its inflexible purpose, wdiether the 
South is as firmly united, or whetlier a counter revolu- 
tion will be effected in either section, which must neces- 
sarily give the victory to its opponents. We know 
nothing of the schemes or plans of either government. 

The original design of the Kepublican party was to 
put an end to the perpetual policy of slavery extent^ion, 
and accpiisition of foreign territory for tiiat purj)ose, 
and at the same time to maintain the constitution and 
the integrity of the republic. This at the South seemed 
an outrage which justified civil war; for events have 
amply proved what sagacious statesmen prophesied thir- 
ty years ago — that secession is civil war. 

If all is to end in negotiation and separation, notwith- 
standing the almost interminable disputes concerning 
frontiers, the strongholds in the Gulf and the unshack- 
led navio-ation of the great rivers throughout their 



36 CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAK. 

whole length, which, it is probable, will never be aban- 
doned bj the North, except as the result of total defeat 
in the field, it is at any rate certain that loth jparties 
will negotiate more equitahly vxith arms in their hands 
than if the unarmed of either section were to deal with 
the armed. If it comes to permanent separation, too, 
it is certain that in the commonwealth which will still 
glory in the name of the United States, and whose peo- 
ple will, doubtless, reestablish the old constitution with 
some important amendments, the word secession vnll he 
a sound of woe not to he lightly uttered. It will have 
been proved to designate, not a peaceful and natural 
function of political life, but to be onlv another expres- 
sion for revolution, bloodshed, and all the horrors of 
civil war. 

It is probable that a long course of years will be run, 
and many inconveniences and grievances endured, be- 
fore any one of the free states secedes from the recon- 
structed Union. 



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calendered, and bound in fancy cloth, flexible, with printed titles, etc., on sides 
anil back ; which, on account of the neat, convenient, and portable size of the 
volumes— particularly adapted for "railw.ay reading" — we have styled " The 
Tk.^vellek's Edition." Seventeen volumes are now ready, embr.acing: 



Pioneers. 
Mohicans. 
The Spy. 
The Prairie. 
The Pathfinder. 
The Deerslayer. 



Eed Eover. 

The AVater-Witch. 

"Wing-and-Wing. 

Two Admirals. 

The niot. 

Brnvo. 



Sea Lions, 

Wyandotte. 

Headsman. 

Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. 

Licinel Lincoln. 



Neat 16mo, uniformly bound in flexible covers, red cloth, per vol.. 



|0 75 



W. A. TOWNSEND i CO. 



5 



COOPER'S LEATHER STOCKING TALES, in Five Vol- 
umes, comprising : 

Deerslayer. Praiiie. Mohicans. Pioneers. Pathfinder. 



Illustrated Edition, cloth, 

People's Edition, cloth, uniform, gilt back and side, 

" " extra sheep, library style, marble edges, 

" " half calf, or half turkey, . . . . 

" " half calf, extra, full gilt backs, or antique, 



$T 50 

5 00 

6 00 

8 00 

9 00 



COOPER'S SEA TALES, Ten Volumes, comprising: 

The Pilot. Wing-and-Wing. The Crater. 

The Red Rover. The Water-Witch. Jack Tier. 

The Two Admirals. Afloat and Ashore. The Sea Lions. 

Miles Wallingford. 

Illustrated Edition, cloth $15 00 

People's Edition, uniform cloth, gilt back and side, 10 00 

" " sheep, extra, marble edges, library style, . . . 12 00 

" " half calf, or half turkey, plain, 16 00 

" " half calf, or half turkey, extra, full gilt backs, or antique, 18 00 



NAVAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By J. 

Fenimore Cooper. 

Abridged by himself, from the full work, for popular reading, with his latest 
corrections, and a continuance to 1S56, from his unpublished MSS., and other 
authentic sources ; including an account of the Japan Expedition ; prepared by 
the Editor of the Octavo Edition. Illustrated with a fine Portrait of the Author 
on Steel, and Fifteen Illustrations of the principal Battle Scenes. 
One vol., 12mo, gilt back and side, $125 



BARLEY'S COOPER VIGNETTES. 

A limited number of "Artist Proofs before letter" have been taken from each 
of the beautiful Steel Vignettes, engraved from Darley's Designs for the New 
Illustrated Edition of Cooper's Works. These are issued in folios, each contain- 
ing eight proofs, and each proof accompanied with a page of letter-press descrip- 
tive of the picture, and embellished with a design on wood. The proofs are 
printed with the utmost care on India and backed on the finest French Plate 
Paper. Each folio is issued in a cover of highly ornamental design, printed in 
tint. 

Complete in eight folios. Price per folio, $3 00 



THE PUBLICATIONS OF 



The Works of Charles Dickens. 



HOUSEHOLD EDITION, Illustrated from Drawings by F. O. 
C. Darley and John Gilbert. 

On March 1st, 1S6I, was commenced, in monthly issues, an entirely new 
edition of Diclcens' Novels, from new stereotype plates, printed by HougiitSn', 
at 'the "Kiverside Press," Cambridge, on superior laid and tinted paper^ in 
style and form similar to Ticknor & Fields' popular Household Edition ov 
THic 'Wavbrlet Novels. Great pains have been taken by the publishers to 
render this edition of Uickens' Works the most perfect series of books ever 
issued in Amerira. The original drawings by Darlet, whose designs for the 
Illustrated Edition of Cooper's Novels have been so distinguished, and the 
drawings by John Gilbert, the foremost of English draughtsmen, (this being 
the first time Mr. Gilbert has contributed original drawings to an American 
publication,) will give this edition a value possessed by no other, either English 
or American 

Tbis edition will have the author's latest prefaces and revisions, being re- 
printed from the last authorized London edition The entire series will be 
completed in fi.*'ty volumes. Each volume will contain an engraving on steel, 
in purel/ne and etching, from a drawing by Darley or Gilbert, the majority by 
Darley. Every issue will be a complete novel, and the publication will proceed 
as nearly as possible in the following order: 

2 vols. 



Pickwick, 


4 vols. 


Two Cities, 


2 


Oliver Twist, 


2 " 


Bleak House, 


4 


Nieklcbv, 


4 " 


Hard Times, 


2 


Curiosity Shop, 


3 " 


Little Dorrit, 


4 


Jilartin Chuzzlewit, 


4 " 


American Notes, 


2 


Barnaby Paidge, 


3 " 


Sketches, 


2 


Christmas Stories, 


2 " 


Uncommercial Traveller, 


2 


Dombey & Son, 


4 " 


Great Expectations, 


2 


Copperfleld, 


4 " 







STYLES Ayo PRICES. 

Cloth, gilt back and side stamp, per vol., $0 75 

The same, uncut edges (English style), " 75 

Half calf, extra, and antique, " 1 25 

Any Kovel may be had /separate from tJte set. 

A hound Prospectu/i. containing fpecimen pages and engravings, loill 06 
sent bij mail, post-paid, to any person remitting 15 cents. 



■"lift 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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